


Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

by DJClawson



Series: Theodore Nelson's Adventures in Sharing a Workspace [32]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Brief Discussion of Suicidal Ideation, Depression, F/M, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Obnoxious cat, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: Winter is hard on people.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock/Theo Nelson
Series: Theodore Nelson's Adventures in Sharing a Workspace [32]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1202407
Comments: 16
Kudos: 45





	Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> All hail the mighty beta, LachesisMeg. All hail.
> 
> Prompts welcome. Prompts and comments feed the beast.

Honestly, sometimes working in food services _sucked_.

It was the dead of winter, which meant the bitter cold kept the customers down, but Theo could barely keep up. Half of his staff - so, two of them - were out with various colds or flus. Deon tried to come to work because he needed the hours, but he was coughing and sneezing and Theo sent him home and paid him half time just to keep him away from the food. He ended up calling around to day workers because he needed help during the lunch rush so he could be in the back doing the more technical butcher work. And just about everyone in the city was sick with the same cold, or freaked out that they might get it. Foggy came in for soup looking miserable and could barely make conversation, which was saying something for him. Theo credited his diet for his own good health, and Foggy just glared. 

Each night, Theo stagged home late, got into bed, and didn’t think much about whether he should stay up for Matt, who didn’t show. After two nights, Matt texted he was busy, and left it at that, and Theo didn’t think too much about it. 

The thing was, he was getting used to sharing his space. Even though Sadie could easily take up half the bed and often attempted to do so by spreading herself across it as inconveniently as possible, it still felt empty. Theo hadn’t _thought_ about asking Matt to move in, or make his stays more regular, but his absence was notable. But Matt usually had a reason to stay away, he told himself. Matt was overworked picking up Foggy’s slack at the firm, and he always found someone to beat the living shit out of, but only because the guy deserved it.

Except there hadn’t been many Daredevil sightings recently. That was fine - the app on Theo’s phone wasn’t exactly a GPS locator, and it was probably better if a fan-made tracking program didn’t work all the time, but it was also bitter cold, and as much as Matt would deny it, he was still human. 

Theo was lying on his back, with the warmth of having an entire cat trying to indignantly smother him, when he thought of his boyfriend frozen on some rooftop, and he called him on the regular phone, and then the burner. Matt didn’t pick up on either one. He would have tried the office line, but he knew they switched it off if they stayed in the office after hours. Theo laid there long enough in silence, listening only to Sadie’s quiet purring against his chest, before willing himself to get up and venture out into the cold, dark night.

The city was never truly quiet, but this was about as close as it got, when the temperature was well below freezing and the midtown theater crowd had departed in their cabs as the last noisy stragglers of the night. Josie’s was still open but he looked in the window and decided not to spook her by coming in and asking for Matt, as Theo was fairly sure that Josie had put two-and-two together about Matt and Daredevil, or at least had suspicions that they knew each other, as about half of Hell’s Kitchen did (Foggy being the celebrity vigilante lawyer didn’t help). From there it wasn’t far to Matt’s place. Matt didn’t respond to the ringer, so Theo prepped himself for finding Matt dead on his living room floor on the way up the old-fashioned manual elevator.

Matt was there, but not sideways. He was on his couch, with uneaten takeout and his open laptop on the new coffee table (which Luke had graciously offered to pay for, but Matt had turned him down). Matt looked about halfway in, halfway out of his Daredevil outfit, without any of the thin chest armor he occasionally wore and the mask. “Oh,” he said in a rather sedate voice. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Theo said back. “Were you going out?”

“Not sure.”

“Christ, it’s freezing in here,” Theo said. He went to the radiator and fiddled with it until he heard clinking in the pipes. “You didn’t pick up your phone.”

“I know.” Matt laid back on his couch. “Sorry.”

He didn’t seem that sorry. Theo walked back over to him and lifted Matt’s chin so he could get a better look at him in the shitty light. “Are you injured?”

“No.” He added after Theo hesitated, “I’m really not.”

“Are you sick?”

“No. That’s just Foggy. And Frank, but Karen’s been covering herself in hand sanitizer.”

“Are you busy with work?”

“No,” Matt said, his voice oddly removed. Theo looked at him again. Matt was mildly disheveled, but not like he had been sleeping. He looked tired. Maybe a little thin, but it was hard to tell with Matt. And Theo couldn’t lay judgment on people for being too thin. Belatedly, Matt added, “I should have picked up the phone. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Theo said. Sometimes people needed space. He understood. He picked up the pristine carton of Pho. “Did you eat?”

“Wasn’t hungry. I thought I might be, but I was wrong.” 

Theo took the carton to the kitchen to put it in the fridge since Matt hated to waste food, and in doing so he realized the kitchen was a bit of a mess. Dishes were stacked up in the sink and there were two different half-filled mugs of cold coffee on the counter. Theo mechanically went about rinsing them out and getting the coffee machine ready for the morning since Matt looked so lethargic. 

“Look, I know you’re lawyering for two, but can you at least call once in a while?”

“Yes,” Matt said with more firmness. “I’m sorry.”

The garbage needed taking out, too. If Theo could smell it, he couldn’t imagine that Matt hadn’t noticed from across the room, maybe across the state. “Do you want me to stay?”

“I’m okay,” Matt said. 

He was hard to read. Theo tied up the garbage, carried it out, and kissed Matt on the head. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

Matt didn’t seem to want him gone, but didn’t want him there, either, so Theo obliged, but it didn’t leave him with a good feeling. He brought lunch over to the office the next day even though they hadn’t ordered. Matt wasn’t offended by the intrusion, and Karen was openly relieved that someone brought food for Matt, who she said was too stressed to eat much of anything, and yes, she would take an extra soup home. Matt didn’t say much, though he was apologetic about his moodiness. Maybe he was coming down with something. And Theo had his own job to get back to, where he always seemed to be behind on orders and finally called in Randy to help him with the butchery, but paid an exorbitant amount (mostly in weed) to do so. Fortunately, he had a lot of vaporizer pen refills to get rid of. 

“You gave up smoking? Fuck, man. I might have to get my life together.”

“I’m running a business. I have to be a little more alert,” Theo said, not wanting to share the real reason to curtail his vaping. “And some of us can run our places without uppers. For starters, it’s _way_ cheaper.”

“You’d be surprised,” Randy said, and Theo bet that he would. 

Shooting the shit about the amount of drugs needed to get through the day in the food industry took Theo’s mind off his problems, and that made it worth the expense. He also managed to go home before ten. Matt texted him - actually texted him - and just wrote, **_Working late._ **

Matt ate dinner at his place the next night, but was not talkative, or very hungry. He was being nice, but he was trying to force it. Theo waited until the weekend, when he could put two of his own brain cells together, to call his own personal Matt-whisperer, who took his call even though Marci said he had a fever of a hundred-and-two.

“Sorry, I didn’t get like ... most of what you said there,” Foggy told him after Theo unloaded all of his relationship-related anxiety on his brother - much more than he’d wanted to say, but all the while he was expecting Foggy to stop him, because he always did. “Um, but - it sounds like Matt is being ... kind of a depressed douche?”

“Yeah.” He really shouldn’t have called. Theo wanted to go over there, actually, and help out, but running over to Brooklyn with soup and supplies was something Mom would have done, and Theo wasn’t Mom. He also knew Marci was taking care of Foggy, and it was important not to intrude on that relationship. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have - “

“No, that’s Matt.” Foggy sighed. Then coughed. Then sighed again. “Look, um, Matt, he gets this way sometimes. It’s not you, it’s him. It’s _definitely_ him. Maybe he’s sad because it’s too cold to beat people up? He got like this in college. Christ, I hope he wasn’t beating people up in college.”

“How long does it last?”

“I dunno. He’s Matt.” Foggy was way too spacey for his conversation, even if he would never admit it. “He had a crazy childhood. That’s something to be sad about.” 

So maybe they weren’t having the most sophisticated conversation on mental health. “Thanks, Foggy. Feel better.”

“I’d better. I think I might have seen every episode of Forensic Files in existence and I don’t remember a single one of them.”

Only after googling “how to care for my depressed boyfriend” did Theo think to ask Foggy about whether Matt had ever been suicidal, then decided that that was a question that shouldn’t be asked, not even of Foggy - that or Theo didn’t have the courage to ask it. Instead he made Matt’s favorite sandwich and took it over to Matt’s apartment.

“Hey,” he said when he found Matt on the couch. “Are you hungry?”

“No,” Matt said. “Just tired.” He was out of work clothes, but not quite in full Daredevil gear yet. 

“You should still eat something.” Theo quite literally shoved the sandwich in Matt’s face, so he probably couldn’t smell anything else. “Come on. Sandwiches don’t make themselves.”

Matt grumbled but he did take it into his lap and started snacking on one of the halves while Theo got himself a beer.

“I was going to call before I went out,” Matt said.

“It’s gonna snow in a few hours. I think you can take a night off.” Theo took a seat in the armchair. “Let’s go to my place.” Because it said on the internet that it was good to get Matt out of wherever he was holed up in. “I mean, you don’t have to, but I would appreciate it.”

“I am really tired.”

“So am I. That’s what the bed is for,” Theo replied. “If you want quiet, that’s fine. I’m not feeling like doing much either. But I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, okay.” So maybe Matt wasn’t at his most verbal. He could get caught inside his own head sometimes when his job didn’t require him to do otherwise. And he did eat half the sandwich before they went back to Theo’s place. He said he just wanted to sleep, and even though it was early, Theo said that was fine, and watched videos on his iPad while Matt laid in bed beside him, clearly not asleep, but not wanting to be bothered. So Theo didn’t bother him.

He convinced Matt to repeat the procedure the next night. Matt was still removed and not talkative, but he wasn’t cold or mean, and he didn’t seem to have the will to fight over it. So that was fine. Theo hugged him in his sleep and decided that for the moment, this was good enough.

On Saturday night, Matt did go out, but only because Danny needed him for something, and all Theo knew about it or wanted to know about it was that Matt didn’t come home with any new injuries, but he did have to ice his shoulder. He woke up early on Sunday morning, but didn’t make a move to get out of bed.

“Do you want to go to church?” Theo asked.

Matt stared at the ceiling - or did the equivalent of that with his body language. 

“I’ll go with you.”

Matt turned his head on his side to face him with an expression of disbelief. 

“I can go into a church. You’ve been there when I’ve been in one. I’m not going to spontaneously combust because I hear someone say Mass.”

Matt didn’t believe him all the way to the church, but Theo put on a collared shirt and went. And it wasn’t terrible. Not good, nothing he particularly connected to emotionally or spiritually, kind of boring, but not the worst thing in the world. The new priest was energetic and didn’t bring hell up once. And here he was, sitting in church next to his _boyfriend_ , so maybe some progress had been made.

They fell into a routine. Matt went over to his place, or he went to Matt’s, and made sure he ate, and that he showered and shaved every day, and was generally around. Matt didn’t talk about whatever he was going through, but Theo didn’t expect him to and certainly didn’t force the topic. They mostly watched TV - and the new TV was really nice. 

Even though they didn’t discuss what might be going on in Matt’s head - Matt dodged any attempts to bring up the subject of how he was feeling - at some point, Matt seemed to be aware of why Theo was being so damn persistent with him.

“I’m not a good boyfriend,” Matt said on another night of staying in.

“Yeah, but I like you anyway.”

Matt’s general mood improved with the weather, and he started going out again - something Theo never thought he would look forward to, because he still worried obsessively for Matt’s safety, but it showed that Matt was inching back toward his old self.

“I don’t know what you did, but this is like, a record turnaround for Matt,” Foggy said when he came to pick up dinner. He had a lot of long hours to pull to get the firm back on track after his prolonged absence - a month later, he still had a dry cough. 

“I didn’t do much of anything,” Theo said, which he felt was true.

“Matt said you went to church with him.”

Theo shyly looked down at the counter. “I just wanted him to get some fresh air.”

“That’s not nothing. He owes you.”

But Theo didn’t bring it up with Matt. He just wanted Matt to be happy. And maybe for his sex drive to come back from the netherworld. Was that so much to ask?

He was sleeping when Matt came in through the window that night. Sadie’s stirring woke Theo, who squinted in the low light. “Are you dripping blood on my floor?”

“Sweat,” Matt said. He was practically vibrating with excitement. “I’ll wipe it up.”

“Close the window,” Theo said. “You’re gonna get a chill. If you don’t have one already.”

Matt was grinning. Not the good kind of grin - the one that made people scared of Daredevil. So Theo had a good guess as to what he’d probably been up to. “I need to shower.”

“I bet, you weirdo.”

Matt took off his mask and paused at the bathroom door. “Do you want to join me?”

Theo paused. “Maybe I need to have an inner dialogue about the morality of having a boyfriend who gets off on hurting people.”

“Don’t. They deserved it,” Matt said unapologetically. He looked so _happy_. “Coming?”

Theo was just relieved to see Matt come alive again, and he wasn’t above his own vices, so he threw off his covers and said, “Hell yes.”

The End


End file.
